


Wondering Where I Am (Lost Without You)

by gabolange



Category: City Homicide (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-25 23:07:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18172658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: Now they've gone and made it real.A gapfiller for 4.16, "Undercover." In which a gunshot wound is complicating, but not as much as everything else.





	Wondering Where I Am (Lost Without You)

**Author's Note:**

> With abiding gratitude to pellucid for the idea and the beta read, among so many other things. Any remaining errors are my own.

***

Nick unlocks the door to the house—their house, Trish and Wesley’s house—and steps aside to let her in. Jen cradles her injured arm, trying to ignore the pain that shoots from her shoulder to her fingertips. The medical goons at SIS had confirmed the gunshot wound wouldn’t do anything but hurt like hell, before bandaging her brusquely and sending them on their way. She hasn’t even taken any painkillers—Nick has them in his pocket.

Jen sags against the wall. She would kick off her shoes, but she’s still wearing Trish’s stupid boots, still wearing a shirt stained with blood and ripped to shreds by the bullet and the medics’ scissors. “Fuck,” she says as Nick comes to stand beside her. 

He’s close, has been closer in these last two days then he has been in four years, and she is grateful. He radiates an unfamiliar, welcome anger and clenches his fist as he asks, “You okay?” 

Jen shakes her head. No, she’s not okay. She’s been shot and manhandled and is seeing red from pain and fury. “Yeah,” Nick says, acknowledging everything she hasn’t said with a sharp nod. He slides his hand between her shoulders and the wall, pulling her toward him. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She nods and lets herself be propelled into their tiny bathroom. It’s as bad as the rest of the house, old and cheap, all gray linoleum and plastic. Only the best for SIS’s finest rent-a-cops. Nick knocks the cover of the toilet closed and the clank of plastic reverberates harshly in the small room. Jen jumps. “Sorry,” Nick says. “I just figured—no cameras in here.”

The whole place is bugged, but at least they can shit and shower without McAlister watching. “I remember,” Jen says. Nick quirks a smile at that and gestures with his chin for her to sit, and she does, slumping to rest against the tank. It digs awkwardly into her back, but it is sturdy enough and she can rest for a minute. Jen closes her eyes.

Beside her, Nick crouches down, putting his hand on her knee as he feels for the zip of her boots. She lets him slide the shoes off, his fingers soft against her calves. It’s too much, too soon, to have him undress her like this—he has started pulling off her socks, releasing her feet from the elasticized cotton—but she cannot do it herself and there is no one else. No one else here, but also no one else she would trust. 

“Hey,” Nick says, and Jen opens her eyes. His face is strained with fatigue and anger and she wonders if it pains him to be forced into even more unexpected intimacy. She knows he wants her as much as she knows this is not the time or place, and that there might never be a time or place. But he quirks his lips up into something like a smile and he says, “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Jen almost laughs. He’s trying to distract her, whether from the pain or the feel of his hands on her body she doesn’t know. “Does a desperate shag in the shower even count?” she asks, though it does, maybe more now than she imagined it could. It had been their last day, the job done, just loose ends to clear up. One of those had been the increasing intensity of his gaze as they drew closer to parting ways. 

She has seen that look too much today.

Nick raises his eyebrows and Jen wonders if she surprised him by addressing it so directly. Blame the gunshot, blame every single second of the last few days, from the abrupt reappearance of the SIS in their lives to Nick’s quiet voice reminding her she knows how he feels about her. Maybe she’s feeling reckless, maybe she’s just tired of all the secrets and lies and fake histories. Maybe she’s just exhausted.

After a long moment, Nick says, “It does if it’s a good desperate shag in the shower.” He meets her eyes, letting the comment hang between them for a beat. He’s right. It had been good. Better than that. But for years it had been just another gauzy remnant, a moment in between when they were no longer Trish and Wesley but had yet to become themselves—those people with day jobs and lives that would take them in different directions. 

And now they’ve gone and made it real. 

Nick takes a breath, shaking his head as if to clear a stray thought he shouldn’t voice. “I’m going to get the scissors. It’s probably easiest to just cut your shirt off,” he says. He stands and leaves her with the memory: his hands beside her head on faded pink tile, his chest firm against her back, his lips close beside her ear with her real name on his breath. 

Now _Jen_ rolls off his tongue too easily, tinged with an affection she knows is deep and lingering. He’d shouted it yesterday when Ratcliffe staged that inane attack. Today, it echoed in her ears as she hit the pavement, his voice more frantic than she’d ever heard.

Nick steps through the door, coming to stop in front of her, orange-handled kitchen shears clutched in his fist. He sets them on the edge of the sink with a thud before kneeling down, reaching for the tie of the sling at her neck. “Hold tight,” he says, and she tucks her elbows together, trying not to notice the brush of his fingers at the nape of her neck or the way her arm screams when he jostles it. 

“It’s okay,” Jen says, but she winces as he unwinds the light cloth and releases her arm. The bullet went through and through, but the gash is deep and required significant stitching. The local anaesthesia has long since worn off.

“No, it bloody isn’t,” Nick says, fond remembrance and new hope both set aside as he looks her over. “Nothing about this is okay.” His jaw clenches and she thinks he might put his fist through a wall if given a chance. 

“I know,” Jen says sharply, as if her anger might diffuse his. “Trust me.” 

“Sorry,” Nick says, taking a breath and grabbing the shears. He stares down at them. “Sorry about this, too.” He reaches for the hem of her shirt at her waist as if to pull it over her head. She imagines his fingers lingering on her skin, slow and easy, but the vision is replaced too quickly with the snip of metal against the flimsy fabric and the low drumbeat of pain.

“I hate this shirt,” Jen says as Nick guides the shears up from her belly to her breastbone, leaving the patterned fabric gaping open. She shrugs her good shoulder as if that might help her get the shirt off, but it clings and Nick drops the scissors at his knees. He leans forward to help pull the sleeve down, which leaves everything pulling on her injured arm. “Ow!” 

“I know,” Nick says. He reaches for the collar of the shirt, pulling it up and away from her injury. He is gentle but expedient, trying hard not to cause her any further pain. But this part seems guaranteed to sting, and Nick lifts the fabric over her shoulder. “I don’t know why they didn’t give you something else to wear.”

Jen snorts and then winces at the movement. “Who knows why they do anything,” she says. With that, she shakes her hand just enough for the sleeve to pull loose and finally she is relieved of the shirt. Her wound burns, and she just wants to get out of the rest of her clothes and into bed. Preferably with enough painkillers to put her out for the night. Preferably with Nick close by her side, breathing deeply as he sleeps. 

How quickly that has become normal. Too quickly.

But they are not done here, and Jen sighs and looks down at herself. Her bra clasps at the back. “I can’t do this myself either,” Jen says, waving her left hand at herself. “Sorry.”

Nick takes a breath. “Not your fault,” he says, but his voice is clipped with stress. 

“Nothing you haven’t seen before, right?” Jen asks, but the comment falls flat this time. If she ever imagined a moment Nick would see her naked a second time, it would have been nothing like the first, hard and fast and over too soon, but certainly nothing like this. 

She has imagined it, of course. Not often, but sometimes on tired nights when they linger too long over drinks or dinner, it is easy to slip into those old patterns that made Trish and Wesley, whoever they were, so good together. The thought sticks: the people they are now would be good together, too. 

Jen sees that idea lingering at the corner of Nick’s eyes on those long evenings, resting behind his studied calm and refusal to do anything she hasn’t fully committed to. He wears that face now, that practiced quiet that belies his pain at her gentle insistence that they are friends and colleagues and cannot be anything more. She hates to look at him like this, lest he see her own want reflected back.

“Right,” Nick sighs. “Come on then.” Jen stands from the commode and turns away from him quickly. He steps close and she can feel the warmth of his body behind her, smell the anger and frustration on his skin. It isn’t arousal, not now, but it could be, on some different night in some different life. He makes quick work of the clasp and Jen holds the bra to her chest with her good hand.

“Get me something to wear?” she asks as the straps slide over her shoulders. 

“Yeah,” Nick says and backs out of the room. Jen drops the bra to the floor stares at herself in the mirror. Her hair hangs tangled in her face. A dark bruise seeps out from under the bandage on her arm. Her ribs glow black and blue from where she fell on the pavement, and her head hurts from thinking about the day. Why did Hartono turn on them? Why were they left so unprotected? Why hadn’t they been given any guns?

“Christ,” Jen says, leaning forward on the counter. She’s a picture, breasts hanging before her, skin battered, half-dressed in clothes that don’t suit anyone she would ever choose to be. Trish’s skirt has a clasp at the side. "Nick?” she calls out and then spits acid into the sink. “Wesley?”

He makes a strangled sound behind her. “Right here.” She turns to see him carrying her pajama pants and a soft gray tank. It’s just what she would have chosen for herself, and of course he knows her too damn well.

They complete the last steps in silence. Nick unhooks the clip on her skirt and she steps out of it, letting it fall in a heap on the floor. She’s out of humor, out of anything but pain and the comfort she finds in the gentle way Nick pulls her pajamas over her bruised body. There’s a tiny spark there between them as he pulls her hair away from her collar and another as he kisses the side of her head, but mostly she feels the warmth of his affection and wishes she could crawl into his arms and stay there until she’s well. 

“You finish cleaning up,” Nick says. “I’ll be just outside.”

** 

Jen falls asleep drugged to the gills and dreams in neon spirals. Always Nick is there, but every time she reaches for him his features morph until he is unrecognizable, or worse. She dreams of Hartono’s face on Nick’s body, McAlister’s gun pointed at his head. She dreams of Nick’s grief upon learning she died at Abbott’s hand because McAlister let her bleed out in the street. It becomes a nightmare when Nick walks away from her after Burns and McAlister asked him to. 

She sleeps hard but wakes with bile building in her mouth and Nick’s breath on her skin. She would like to take this moment to watch him as he rests, take in the smell of his sweat and the softness of his face in sleep, but instead she bolts for the bathroom. “Ugh,” she says, retching over the sink. 

Is it those lingering false images that have made her ill? Or the sudden memory of what they have agreed to do this morning—to take out Abbott and Hartono themselves, leaving McAlister and his cronies to their own devices? Or is it just the bloody drugs?

She hates this goddamned assignment. 

As she straightens up and wipes her mouth, Nick appears behind her, bracketed in the bathroom door. She smiles wanly at the question in his eyes. “Just need some coffee,” she says, turning on the tap and letting the remnants of her dinner wash down the sink. She would like a shower, but she’s not going to put either of them through that, not with the day they have ahead of them, not for anything.

Nick nods, hanging back uncharacteristically. She remembers the feel of his hand on her face as they whispered in the dark last night, his fingers brushing lightly through her hair. He says, “I’ll get it started. And then come back to help you get dressed.”

He recedes into the bedroom and Jen runs her good hand under the tap and frowns. She’s not sure how well she can squeeze the toothpaste without it getting everywhere—she can’t dress herself, is sick from meds and nerves, can barely brush her teeth. How are they going to bring down their targets when she’s this bloody useless? She’d insisted that she go with Nick yesterday, but now she’s a liability to his success. But of course, this plan only works if they’re in it together, and she won’t get left behind with Burns and the rest. McAlister would have her shot before letting her go.

She drops the toothbrush into the sink with a splash. Nick will be annoyed at the mess—no, he won’t. If this was a normal morning, Jen and Nick at home together, and she left the bathroom covered in the detritus of her routine, he would be annoyed at the mess. But today he will simply come in and clean up after her like it is nothing, without pity, without anything but hatred for the men who did this to her.

Jen and Nick at home together. There’s a thought, one she wishes did not feel so familiar. She knows what Trish and Wesley were like at home together, or used to. But they weren’t friends then and for a long time moved so carefully around each other, all _whatever you want_ , and _of course that’s fine_ , and _don’t worry about it_. It took months sharing space before they fought about anything, let alone that she ought to take better care tidying up. 

Now, she can tease him about folding his undies, she can trust him with her deepest fears, and it doesn’t take much at all to imagine him grumbling at face powder on the vanity or the cereal not put away. It would all be so easy. So much would change, but in so many ways, nothing would. 

He would come in and wash her face and brush her hair if she asked him to, Jen knows. Instead, she fumbles for a makeup wipe and pretends its scratch against her face is good enough. She’s wearing a tank so the deodorant isn’t so hard. Maybe she will take the sling off long enough to do her makeup—Trish’s overdone, gaudy face—just to make sure it looks like she’s putting effort into this whole charade. It will hurt like hell, but that’s the price of their plan. 

Nick appears over her shoulder in the mirror as she fights with the hairbrush. He leans against the doorframe in that familiar slouch that is not nearly as casual as he pretends. “Coffee’s almost ready,” Nick says, nodding in the mirror. “Let me grab you something to wear, okay?” He doesn’t wait for her answer but fades back to fumble in the dresser. He is quiet this morning, she notices finally, and she wonders if he slept at all. 

Usually she is the one who tosses and turns, fretting over every impossible scenario, and that isn’t Nick’s style. But he might have stayed up, staring gently at her face, imagining different ways to kill Hartono and Abbott, then McAlister and Burns. 

He could have killed Burns last night. Nick’s anger is usually kept low and simmering, more evident as disappointment than anything else. That vigilante case had made him furious, but it had been nothing like the visceral heat she witnessed as he almost put Burns through the wall. The difference, Jen knows, was her life in danger. Their lives in danger, all for nothing.

And now, he sulks back softly with an arm full of her clothes. “I hope this goes together,” he says, nodding his chin at the pile.

Jen snorts. “They didn’t give me many options,” she says, though as she looks over what he’s brought she notices that it will work well enough. Trish’s wardrobe is full of swishy skirts and patterned shirts, and this version of that uniform doesn’t clash. Certainly whatever horrible shirt Nick has to put on will be worse than this combination. “I miss my clothes,” she says.

He smiles wanly. “Me too,” he says, and she’s not sure if he misses her wardrobe or his own. He deposits the clothes on the back of the toilet. He’s brought her fresh underwear and she chews her lip. Some things she will do on her own.

“One second,” Jen says, and shoos him out of the room again, closing the door. She wriggles her hips and the pink pajama bottoms fall to the floor, and she kicks them away. Next, she hooks her good thumb at the hip of her panties and lets them follow. She needs a bikini wax and to shave her legs, but for now she can only swipe for the clean bottoms and tug them on as best she can. 

Nothing he hasn’t seen before, right? She sighs.

“Okay,” Jen says, and Nick pushes the door back open. 

Between them, they are wearing very little, and the air thickens as Nick steps closer. He slides the sling gently over her head, then before Jen can cradle her arm against her, Nick tugs at the hem of her tank. He pulls it off her the way he put it on, one arm and then the other, like a patient father would with a child just learning to dress themselves. But her breasts are bare now and his breath catches, and Jen closes her eyes for just a moment.

She doesn’t think she has ever had a man help her dress, not like this, not at all. Nick holding out her bra so she can put her arms through the straps would be the most ridiculous moment of her life if it weren’t for the clench of his jaw as he steadies his hands. Instead, as he snaps her in as best he can, she thinks that she likes it more when he takes off her clothes than when he puts them on. 

One of them should lighten the mood, break some of the tension, but Jen doesn’t know what she could say. Nick is trying hard not to touch her, as if such a thing would be possible with this task in these tight quarters. He angles his body away from her as he leans to grab her shirt, and she can tell that he’s at least half-hard. 

It’s worse than yesterday, somehow. Maybe her pain is diminished just enough, maybe their anger is higher, stronger, shaking them from frustration to arousal. Maybe it is just one more moment that shouldn’t be happening, pushing at this thing between them they have worked so hard to avoid. She takes a shuddering breath.

But this is the hardest part, somehow putting on Trish’s tight shirt, and there is no way to do it elegantly or without pain or without Nick. He stares at her for a moment, just in her bra and panties, and then brings up the shirt to drop it over her head. She could feel like a child, but for his gaze, his warmth, his erection close behind her. She pulls her good arm through the sleeve and bites her lip and repeats the movement with the other.

“Dammit,” she says, pulling her arm close to her body as pain spikes hard. It’s a sharp, biting moment that does nothing to lower the heat in the room. 

“Sorry,” Nick whispers hoarsely, and she doesn’t think he means it for her shoulder.

Jen shakes her head. She can do the skirt on her own, so she scoops it up and holds it to her chest, snagging her sling with it. “It’s okay,” she says and tries to steady her voice. “I’ll finish up out here. Get some coffee.” She steps out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her. As she hears the shower turn on, she tries not to imagine Nick under the spray or what he might be doing with his hands.

** 

Everything has happened too fast. One minute, they were keeping up the charade—Trish and Wesley, headed to the market to pick up some semi-automatic weapons—the next, they were back at Homicide, plotting how to stop Hartono’s imminent bomb attack. Everyone rushes. There are so many lives on the line.

Nick is out there, taking his well-earned place at the head of the squad. Jen wants to be with him— _we do this together_ —but instead sits at her desk babying her arm, the scanner on her computer turned on low so she can listen for updates.

It is odd to be without him after so much time together. Three days of sharing space, relying only on each other, and she feels suddenly bereft and surprisingly alone. Need bubbles under her skin, right there with the itch of her wound, and she doesn’t like it. 

It isn’t only the last three days, a small rebellious voice tells her. Or it wouldn’t have been if not for the year that preceded it: getting to know Nick, not Wesley. Getting to like him again, not for his covert capabilities but for his honest ones. Nick, joining her for drinks after long days, learning which of her moods called for wine and which for whiskey. Nick, trusting her instincts when she said Stewart Franklin hadn’t killed himself. Nick, indulging her frustration over Rhys, shaking her out of a bad day with a good joke.

But Jen doesn’t like the idea that they are inevitable. It’s too much of a cliche, falling for a man she once had to pretend to love. If she had met him in a different way—as someone other than Trish Claybourne, fake wife, or Jen Mapplethorpe, too-real colleague—it would be so easy. 

But it could be easy despite all of that, she knows, and maybe all of this mess with SIS and Hartono was just a kick in the ass to make her contend with the obvious. She snorts softly. As if there were another scenario that would have landed them together in the ladies lockers at work, Nick helping her out of her Trish costume and into her own clothes.

They had screeched to a stop in front of the office and piled out of Ratcliffe’s car. Nick had plucked at his hideous shirt. “I’m not wearing this upstairs,” he said. It was absurd, of course, to delay even a minute, especially for something as meaningless as their outfits. But Jen understood—she couldn’t wait to remove the evidence of Trish Claybourne from her skin, even if she will never shake the memory.

“Me neither,” she said. Nick glanced down at her sharply.

But with everything that came before, it had been fast and well-practiced. He had let her lead, waiting only a second for her to confirm that she was alone in the locker room before barging in. He undid her combination lock quickly, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know the code. “Sorry to rush,” he said, but she shared his urgency and nodded him along. Time to get back to work.

She ducked her head to shrug out of the sling, and then let him pull her shirt slowly over her head. Her arm burned, familiar now, and she didn’t flinch. He knelt down and unzipped her boots, one and then the other, and she stared at the ceiling and tried not to think of any other reason Nick might be on his knees between her legs. 

He stood, and his hands did not linger on the skin at her hips as he unclipped her skirt.

She reached in and grabbed her shirt, an old thing she had forgotten she owned. She had never been so glad to see fading purple satin in her life. “It will be nice to just be ourselves again,” she said, handing him the blouse.

“Yeah,” Nick said, and she ignored the wobble in his voice as he reversed course and helped her pull the shirt on. She shooed him out after that—she could do up her own trousers and slide on her own shoes, and he needed to change his shirt at least—and now she waits for news and thinks about that quaver. It will be nice to be themselves again, except their real lives have separate houses and separate beds, and Nick has not hidden how hard that will be.

She fiddles with her computer, tracing her fingers over the keys. It will be hard. She doesn’t want to want him, but she can’t help but imagine his arms around her every time she closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to give in, because that would mean that this thing between them is stronger than all her carefully constructed reasons. She doesn’t want to have been wrong. 

There are so many good reasons to go back to the way things were, the job first among them. Don’t screw the crew, that old cardinal rule. But more, they are such good friends and partners; if something were to go wrong between them, they might never get back everything they have. Less than everything has always felt better than nothing. Less is comfortable, and easy, and almost good enough.

Almost.

She is so fucking tired. Not only from the pain and the stress, but from the weight of this on her shoulders. It’s been three days, or a year, spent holding it all back, convincing herself not to want him, pretending all the arguments matter more than he does. Maybe without this horrible flashback to that old shared life it wouldn’t have come to a head, but she will never know. Maybe it would just have been a different tragedy on a different day.

Today, after all this, she doesn’t want to go home alone, not to a cold house and an empty bed. Not today, maybe not ever again. She doesn’t want to go home without Nick. 

She doesn’t have to. 

The scanner crackles low on her laptop. It’s Stanley, his voice welcome and clear: “All units, stand down. We got them.”

**

Nick lets them into her house and drops her keys on the side table by the door and the daybag he keeps in his car at his feet. Jen follows close behind. The knick-knacks on the sideboard are a relief; it is not only her own bed she wants, but her own space: the hand towels her mother brought as a souvenir from Paris, printed garishly with the metro map, the wobbling hand rail on the stairs that she has refused to let Nick repair, the dying plants they stepped past on their way in. Home.

But Nick’s presence warms the hall. Jen reaches for his hand, winding their fingers together, and looks up at him. His eyes are tired but something of his earlier wariness has shaken loose, and instead of folding in on himself, he reaches his free hand to stroke her face. “Bed?” he asks, his voice full of fatigue rather than innuendo. 

She shakes her head and allows herself to smile. “Shower,” she says, leaning into his touch. She turns her head and kisses his palm. “You can wash my hair.”

Nick smiles gently, his eyes sparkling with renewed interest. After the trauma of the last few days, the prospect of his happiness is a relief. “After you,” he says, dropping his hand to gesture down the hall toward her bedroom. She lets her hips sway as she walks ahead of him.

Her bathroom is as she left it, cluttered with the remnants of an a days-old morning rush. She’d left her face cream open and it has dried out, the trash is overfull. She would not have anyone else in here without cleaning up first, but this is Nick. If it is their first night together in some ways, it is their hundredth or more in others. He has seen it all before.

But the way he steps up behind her is new, something barely remembered and too often imagined. Now instead of holding himself back, he presses close, letting her feel the warmth of his body as he starts their process anew. He brushes his fingers under her hair as he undoes her sling, a short massage of the tight muscles at the back of her head. She almost tells him not to stop as she leans back into his touch.

He moves on too quickly, but presses his hand against her belly before he pulls up her shirt, some comfort for the loss of his touch. This part still hurts, the way the stitches in her arm tug as she moves, pulling against each other. She hisses, and Nick smooths his thumb over her shoulder as her tugs her shirt over her head. “I’m sorry,” he says, breath close against her ear, his hands suddenly light on her skin. 

Jen shrugs, shaking her head. The pain is already fading and she wants his affection more than his concern. “I’m not getting dressed for a week,” she says, leaning into Nick as he discards her blouse. Part of her might also like to sleep for a week, climb in bed and rest her head against his chest, save everything that’s burning between them for a time when her knees aren’t buckling from pain and fatigue. He wouldn’t protest but she doesn’t want to wait, not anymore.

Nick quirks up his lips at that, smiling gently. “Sounds like a good plan to me,” he says, unhooking her bra as he speaks. She lets it fall away from her body without any pretense. Nick’s eyes darken but he doesn’t move his hands from where they landed at her waist, and she thinks he’s being far too respectful. 

“You can touch me,” she says. She wants his hands on her, pushing away the hurt, seeking joy instead.

Nick nods, but doesn’t raise his hands to her breasts. “I will,” he says, leaning forward so his voice is close behind her. “I want to touch you.” He reaches up and brushes the hair back from her neck and kisses the small patch of skin behind her ear, letting his tongue dart against it. Jen shivers. Nick straightens up, again seeking her gaze in the mirror. “But you could use a shower.”

She would bristle at the comment if it came from anyone else, but instead she nods. She strips off her clothes as quickly as she is able, forcing herself to pay attention to clasps and elastic and not the sound of Nick’s clothes hitting the floor beside hers. 

Jen turns on the shower and steps in, holding her head directly under the spray. The hot water stings her arm and she shifts slightly, just enough to keep the bandage from the pounding heat. If Nick weren’t here, she thinks she could stand this way for an hour, letting the water wash away the week. All the stress and hurt and anger, let every horrible moment circle down the drain.

But there are better ways to relax. Nick pulls back the curtain and steps into the shower, and she lets herself look him up and down. She sees little things she hadn’t known or hadn’t remembered: the sparseness of the hair on his chest, the thickness of his unerect cock. She takes in the details she has always loved but has never let herself enjoy: the definition of his pecs, that half-smile he gives her when he wants her. He is wearing it quietly now, along with a warm look in eyes that reminds her that this is about so much more than lust.

No, it’s Nick. Nick, her best friend and longtime partner, who has has loved her longer than she cares to admit. She wishes still that she had met him without the complications of Trish and Wesley or the job, but she can’t regret it now, not when he is staring at her like that, not with her arousal flaring low in her belly.

“Hey,” she says on a sigh. 

“Wash your hair?” he replies, blinking away the water that splashes between them.

She nods, quirking up her lips in a smile. They can start there. “Please,” she says, again turning her back to him. He puts his hand on his shoulder and pulls him against her. He squeezes the shampoo into his palms and runs his hands through her hair, rubbing his fingers firmly against her scalp. He is slow and methodical, pressing deeply until the muscles release. She groans in relief as the tension starts to ease, and she rests her head on his shoulder and lets the soapy water wash over them both.

“Jesus,” Jen says. “You’re good at that.”

“Is that right?” Nick says in a low voice she has never heard. And perhaps arousal is starting to overcome his fatigue, because he says, “I’m good at other things, too.” Oh, she remembers. 

Finally, he moves his hands from her neck to her belly to her breasts, taking them in his palms and squeezing gently. He weighs them in his hands, one and then the next, then runs his fingers over her nipples. He is soft at first, the barest touch, light under the hot water. 

Jen can’t tell if she is too hot or not hot enough, if the way she sags against him is from want or exhaustion, if pain can really be pleasure, sharp and burning and heightening every sensation—but Nick increases the pressure on her breasts, squeezing and pinching, and she squirms. “Oh God,” she says as warmth pools between her legs. Forget her arm, forget what brought them here, forget anything but Nick and all this heat. 

Slowly, he draws his fingers away from her breast and snakes one hand down her sternum toward her belly, seeking to tangle his fingers in the wet hair between her legs. Something in the back of her mind protests and she grabs for his wrist lightly, stopping his progress. “Not here,” she whispers, even as she grinds her hips back into his, pressing his growing erection into her back. He is hard and wet and—.

No. Not here. Not not this time. This time she wants to be able to see him, wants to be able to kiss him, wants to be able to hold herself as close as she can and take as much time as she needs. 

Nick takes a shaky breath and kisses the top of her head. “Right,” he says, dropping his hands. “I wouldn’t mind a bed myself.” He draws a finger down her back, tracing her spine, and she shivers at the touch and then the loss of it as he steps back and out of the shower. She holds herself under the spray for a moment, trying to calm her racing heart, and then cranks the shower off and steps into the bathroom. Nick hasn’t lingered. 

The room is full of steam, but still she tries to dry herself off one-handed, running the towel roughly over her head and skin. She would call for Nick, but they would never make it out of here, and she has had too much of seeing his face in damp mirrors, feeling rough tile under her feet.

She combs her fingers through her hair and pads into the bedroom.

Nick is sitting naked against the headboard of her bed, his usually-neat hair sticking up in every direction. His cock bobs against his thigh, and he smiles softly as he sees her approach. “Hey beautiful,” he says.

Jen snorts. She is no more beautiful than she was this morning, body still littered with bruises, hair now a soggy mess, injured arm held awkwardly against side, bandage peeling from the shower. But Nick looks at her like he doesn’t see any of that, or doesn’t mind, and she crosses the room and tucks herself under his arm. “Hey yourself,” she says.

He doesn’t say anything, just curls his knuckle under her chin and leans down to kiss her. It starts simply, the soft touch of his mouth on hers, his lips dry and cool. He is warm and sturdy and Jen is struck with the realization that despite everything, she has never kissed him before. How is that possible? Of all the things they have shared, somehow it is this simple thing that is new.

She parts her lips and deepens the kiss, letting her tongue touch his, gently at first and then with more interest. He tastes tired, the weight of a long day on his breath. They share that—she should have brushed her teeth—but he tucks his hand behind her head, winding damp strands of her hair around his fingers, and maybe it’s another thing that doesn’t matter the way it should simply because it’s Nick. 

She sucks on his lower lip, fondling it with her teeth, and runs her hand over his chest. His actions are still so restrained, though his heart pounds under her fingers. She can feel her breath start to catch as she rubs her legs together, creating friction where Nick hasn’t. She smiles against his mouth. “You can touch me,” she says again, lips brushing his as she speaks. “Please touch me.”

He kisses the side of her mouth, then her cheek and her jaw. He trails a finger down her neck, then cups her breast. He rubs his thumb over her nipple, too gentle, but wetness gathers between her thighs. She rests her palm over the back of his hand, pressing his fingers into her skin, wanting more. “There you go,” Jen says.

But something isn’t right. Nick pulls back then, ducking his chin and smiling tightly and Jen peers at him. He has wanted this for so long. “What is it?” Jen asks. 

He strokes his fingers across her face, then brushes his nose against hers. “I almost killed Travis Abbott,” he says. “I wanted to.”

Jen nods. His anger has been barely contained, and she can imagine his fury when faced with the man who upended their lives, who tried to kill her, who tried to kill them both. In Nick’s shoes, she would have done the same thing, and she doesn’t know if there is anyone else who will ever understand. Some things will always be theirs alone to bear.

“It’s all right,” she says, taking his cheek in her hand, trying to turn him to face her. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

Nick shakes his head. “It isn’t,” he says, balling his fist against the doona. “He was just—.” Nick shrugs and Jen can fill in the blank. He wasn’t the worst of them. He was the one who pulled the trigger. He was used, just like Nick and Jen had been.

“I know,” Jen says, stroking his face with her thumb, feeling the rise of his stubble under her touch. “But you didn’t.” He starts to object, and she runs her finger over his lip, quieting his protest: that he could have, that he would have, that he might not deserve the trust she’s placing in him now. “You didn’t.” She takes a breath and says something she hopes desperately is true. “And we made it. We’re going to be okay.”

He swallows. “Yeah,” he says, leaning into her touch. Maybe the only way forward now is together.

She leans in and kisses him again, coaxing his mouth open under hers. “Need me to show you?” she whispers, and as he nods, she pushes up and swings her leg over his thighs to straddle him. She settles herself close, trapping his erection against her belly. 

“Look,” she repeats, running her thumb over his lip. She tilts his head up and kisses him, pressing her breasts against his chest, her cunt against his cock. He curls his hands against her arse, pulling her more tightly against him. His fingers dig more firmly than she expects and she wiggles in pleasure. “There you are,” she says.

Now, she rolls her hips in time with his hands, opening her legs, holding herself as close as she can as they rock together. She finds a good angle for her clit against his pubic bone and hums, but doesn’t do more, not yet. Let him feel every inch of her, alive and warm and wanting him. Let them both see this is real.

It takes too long, and she starts to notice the chill in the air, the tingle of her arm under the damp bandage. She doesn’t want to be distracted, will need more soon, but holds herself back until the stress in his shoulders starts to ease and his breath against her neck quickens with want. Now he can put aside the horrors of the week and give in to a moment they have wanted for longer than either would care to admit. “God Jen,” Nick says, thrusting his hips against her. 

“There you go,” she says, and pulls up on her knees and arches her back, baring her breasts to him. Nick grins and takes the bait, taking one of her breasts into his mouth. He sucks firmly, flicking his tongue over her nipple, pressure and suction and the barest hint of teeth. His hands stay close against her arse, holding her close. 

He sucks and he kneads and she doesn’t know which is better, his hands or his mouth, and she folds her good hand around his head, holding him closer. Her arousal pulses in her cunt and her breasts, and she can feel her heartbeat speed up under her stitches. The pain rushes in and she fights it, tightening her fingers in Nick’s hair, closing her eyes and wishing for his fingers on her clit or his cock finally inside her. 

She drops a kiss onto the crown of his head. “Yes,” she says. “Nick, yes.” He responds by dipping his fingers between her legs, sneaking up and in, and she grinds down against him. “Oh God,” she says. She’s always loved his hands, imagined those long fingers put to good work, and she was right, oh, definitely she was right.

Her releases her breast and puts his face against her sternum, licking at the sweat between her breasts, and it is so much, his tongue, his fingers, the throb in her arm, and she is shaking now, overcome with need. “Nick,” she says, keening, and she doesn’t know what she is asking for, just more.

“Yes,” he says, groaning against her chest, and his need makes her smile. He leans back and meets her gaze, and finally his eyes are happy, warm with lust and want. 

Jen strokes his face. “I want you.” She shifts forward and kisses him before reaching between them to palm his erection. It twitches in her hand and she steadies them both before sinking down onto him. He fills her and she sighs, taking a breath as she enjoys the smell of his arousal, the feel of his thickness inside her. “Oh,” she says. “Yes.”

Nick groans and he pulls her closer, wrapping his arms tight around her. “Jen,” he says softly.

“I’m right here,” she replies and starts to move. 

***


End file.
